Menu

The Use of Parodies in Pop Culture

Propaganda has permeated through many cultures throughout the world affecting the policies of major world players. They are meant to influence the masses and many forms have become iconic in their respective culture. For example the United States has the “I want you” poster from World War I and World War II. When the propaganda becomes popular it becomes subject to becoming a parody. The Vietnam War had the “I want out” poster as an example. Today pop culture and propaganda parodies have become intertwined through various ways. The use of propaganda in a brand can be seen to a great extent today and seeps through more parts of pop culture than many may think.

One of the most popular franchises in film history, Star Wars, has seen itself in many forms of pop culture; tv shows, books, toys, clothes, the list goes on. They even have propaganda made for the conflicts in Star Wars. Much of this propaganda was inspired from previously made propaganda from countries such as Canada or the United States. Two of the posters depicted on the website are “If the Headgear Fits Wear It!” and “This man is your friend. He fights for freedom” (featuring Han Solo, a Corellian). The former comes from a Canadian poster from World War II in an attempt to recruit soldiers against the Germans. The latter is based off an American propaganda campaign to bolster allied unity. The series of posters featured Russians, Dutch, English, Canadians, Chinese and Australians as men who fight for freedom. Both posters reveal different aspects of how the parodies can be portrayed using Star Wars.

The “If the headgear fits” poster was created by Disney for the television show ‘Star Wars Rebels’ on Disney XD. The show created numerous propaganda posters for the show before the release (StarWars.com). All of these can be seen on the Star Wars website. In the show’s canon the posters were made for the planet of Lothal, the main planet in the show. It’s an outer rim planet that initially wanted to join the empire for protection and economic opportunity, but that was not the plan for the Empire (Wookiepedia). They established factories on the planet and did offer jobs but also brought widespread pollution from their factories on the planet. The factories coming in also required security and the Empire’s stormtroopers were sent down essentially setting up a police state across the planet. After the occupation had made noticeable negative changes most of the planet was against the Empire and and imperial propaganda campaign began to sway the masses of Lothal. Outside of the show they were released in spring of 2014 more as advertisements for Star Wars Rebels and sent to entertainment magazines and website to raise attention for the show that came out the following fall (StarWars.com). The use of propaganda as an advertisement is something that isn’t very common, we usually see advertisements that are propaganda such as Coca-Cola partnering with the military. This use takes a fresh look at the propaganda that we’ve been looking at on this website. Parody propaganda can be an interesting method of advertising and managed to raise much intrigue and awareness for the new show. Disney took a creative turn to try and make something new setting themselves apart from other companies once again. While much of the Star Wars propaganda is created by Disney today, they are not the only creators of Star Wars parody propaganda.

A key point to remember is that not all of Star Wars’ propaganda parodies come from Disney itself. Fans create many parodies that are seen across the internet. Some sites this can be done are Tumblr and Deviantart, most notably. An example of a fan made poster is “This man is your friend”, a fan made poster by Brian George. This picture depicts Han Solo as the ‘friend’ with the named ‘Corellian’ replacing a nationality going in there (such as Russian). He made it because he wanted to try and make a mashup between Star Wars and propaganda after seeing other parodied posters of “This man is your friend.” (Madartlab). In the poster, the use of Han Solo shows the leaning to the Rebellion. To add some context on Han the reason the word “Corellian” is because this is his initial homeworld, Corellia (Wookiepedia). An issue with this poster though is Han’s homeworld of Corellia was a part of the deep core in the galaxy and was very much so on the side of the empire. Aside from that issue, this poster does a very good job at parodying the initial World War II poster.This also helps to show how the fans work with the lore and want to create more to add to the constantly growing universe. There are many creative fans of the franchise that create fan art through many ways for the purpose of sharing their content with other fans. Choosing a poster parodied many times previously was a good call for a point where to start. This poster had seen many parodies previously so the use of this poster was nothing new. While Star Wars fans and Disney have created so much propaganda they still aren’t the only source of pop culture that made parody propaganda in recent years.

Star Wars doesn’t hold a monopoly on parody propaganda with pop culture icons.The incredibly popular film franchise of Lord of The Rings have seen their fair share of largely fan-made propaganda as well, being one of the most commercially and critically successful book to movie franchises of all time. They pull also from a large fan base who put custom artwork on websites like Deviantart as well. WeWantYou contains one example of a fan made poster parody from Deviantart. The iconic “We want you” poster instead is a picture of Gandalf saying “You shall not pass.” This combining of two iconic lines creates a very well made and effective parody. Similar to the Star Wars parodies, the poster used it’s franchises jokes to convey the message. Most people know Gandalf’s line “You shall not pass!” from “The Fellowship of the Ring.” For some context this was around the end of the second act of the film when the fellowship traveled through the mines of Moria. This line is one of many of the Fellowship’s most iconic lines that any fan of the franchise would recognize. The line received much internet fame and became even more well known by even those who hadn’t seen the films. The replacement of Uncle Sam with Gandalf also makes sense comparing their roles. Uncle Sam was the symbol for the United States in political cartoons and a rallying figurehead for the Americans. Gandalf in the Lord of The Rings. He brought together the people of middle earth under his guidance, recruiting many to join such as the hobbits Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee. He also recruited the rohirrim in Two Towers to fight the Uruk hai armies. Lord of The Rings has many fans dedicated to their fandom. Other aspects of pop culture can mix very well with seemingly forgotten propaganda of the United States.

Social media has spread to many aspects of culture, quickly consuming the world as one of the most effective ways to get a message across. Entire campaigns are through social media, such as the planning of the Arab Spring. With that being said one of the parody poster analyses on the site reviewed is titled “Social Media Sinks Ships” featuring a poster of a bird resembling the Twitter logo. The bird more closely resembles an eagle silhouette, in an attempt to mix the two themes together, something that seen above in the Gandalf and Corellian posters can be done very well if done right. This poster parody is derived from the concept of “loose lips sink ships” a poster and theme of anti-espionage from the United States in World War II. the mixing of Twitter and the loose lips theme work very well considering Twitter has a character limit to prevent long and rambling posts. This parody poster shows more than just the “nerd culture” that today is mainstream is not the only source of the parodies. This social media aspect focuses on the younger generations such as millennials. The connection with this poster and the other three is the intended audience.

All four of these posters are meant to appeal to a younger audience, considering millennials make up large numbers of users on the sites these poster would be found such as Deviantart and Tumblr. With the audience being this young there’s a strong chance many of the younger viewers may not get the reference, then the question is why are they made if the target demographic may not understand? The creation of these posters presents the opportunity for people to educate themselves, because there will be people who will look up the reference. There will also always be people who want to make the posters to express their creative interests. Parodies will also be effective in advertising when done right, even with an obscure reference. The use of parodies today is not going away anytime soon and becoming more prevalent through companies like Disney and fans of their respective material.